Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Bones as Facts
Message-ID: <550@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-May-85 19:22:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.550
Posted: Mon May 27 19:22:54 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 03:29:13 EDT
References: <1146@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Distribution: net
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37
Summary: 

In article <1146@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) writes:
> ...  The family tree of man is regularly given substantial
> revision.
> 
> That makes it tempting to reject the whole mess.  The temptation should
> be resisted:  "[S]ome creationists have committed the sad error of
> refusing to accept bona fide fossils because they seemed to contradict,
> or pose apparently insoluble problems to, the creationists view of man's
> origin.  It should be realized that where bones have been found as
> fossils they represent facts and must be dealt with as such.  In
> addition, because some human paleontologists have been guilty of
> misrepresentation as well as honest mistakes, other creaionists have
> tended to say, 'A plague on your whole house' and have ignored all the
> findings of anthropology."  pp89-90, from Wilbert H Rusch, "Fossil
> Evidence", in _A Challenge to Education_, Walter Lang, ed,
> Bible-Science Association, Caldwell, Idaho, 1972, 89-96.

Not just creationists.  Personally, I despise human paleontology the
way I despise butterfly collectors.

There are some branches of science that are intrinsically gaudy: they
attract alot of attention.  As a consequence, they get overworked when
too many people compete on the basis of too little subject material to
go around.  Good workers get outcompeted or outshouted by the egotistical
who want to be headline-makers.  Quality is overwhelmed by quantity.
The pressure to stand out from the crowd encourages bad practices like
working with too-small sample sizes in human phylogenies, or naming every
population of a butterfly a subspecies.

Human evolution is in my opinion one of the most poorly documented
(by the fossil record) phylogenies around.  It's unfortunate that it
happens to be the one we're most curious about, and that this provides
an opening for abuse by scientist/showmen and creationists.  It's still
important (and well funded), but other groups have much better evidence.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh